


The Forgotten

by Munchaus



Category: Original Work
Genre: Depression, Loneliness, Madness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 10:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14470341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munchaus/pseuds/Munchaus
Summary: In the town of Lookout, West Virginia, a man is charged with guarding the town's only cemetery. What follows is a first-hand account of death that laughs in the face of life itself.





	The Forgotten

In the mountains of West Virginia rests a town of dreams. As the hush of night glides over the peaks, the living take shelter in their beds, and the dead rest in the earth. I am charged with keeping watch over the dead in the town's only cemetery. For more than a decade, I have listened to the cemetery wind as it howled through the trees and into the earthen plots below, breathing life into everything.

The town of Lookout is a place with more dead than living. And yet, no one comments on this fact. My graveyard is packed with the long-gone, but only a handful of houses litter the hills and fields. There is an ever-growing presence of death, and not one soul, save for myself, seems to notice. I keep this fact to myself, as no one likes to think about the great abyss that seems to await us all. The very mention of my work as a gravekeeper draws quiet scorn and a few frowns. So I retreat to my work, content to be among those who sleep, and dream, for all eternity. 

As each night falls, the moon bathes my tombstones in contradictions of light and shadow. I stare at the flitting and flickering figures that dance upon the marble, and I wait for the voices of the dead to fill the silence that accompanies a graveyard. Sometimes these sleeping figures whisper of lost love. Others cry out about fields bathed in blood as friends and neighbors wage war. But all of them fall silent eventually, and they dream.

For you and I, dreams are fantastical things. For the dead, dreams are a chance to meet with old friends, or to form new bonds that transcend bone and sinew. As souls rest, they find themselves in a great nexus, a hub that even unites former enemies as they realize there is plenty of time to mend old wounds.  
I've heard the mumblings of this nexus from the lips of my wards. I've listened to them chuckle at a friend's stories, or whisper sweet-nothings to an old flame. I listen to these souls as they waltz through eternity, and I honestly feel hate and bile climb up my throat. To know that my only purpose is to watch as the lifeless enjoy a liveliness that I have never felt, it makes the flames of jealousy stoke in my heart. But there is nothing I can do. I can't harm the dead. To protect them is my only purpose. To ensure that they're guarded is my only cause.

I know this is life in a town of dreaming dead, though. It seems paradoxical, but the promise of death gives me hope. When I die, I'll join a league of equality that I haven't found among the living. The nexus that all dead wander is an opportunity to live the life that I have never known, all in the face of oblivion.

The thought of committing suicide has crossed my mind on more than one occasion. After all, why not skip decades of loneliness when I can have a chance to be like everyone else? The answer is simple. It's because I don't know what happens to those who kill themselves. I've never heard my wards speak of someone who took their own life. I've never had an interred individual arrive as a result of dying by their own hand. Because of this, I fear that the suicidal go somewhere else.

What does it matter? Why even live when death offers a finality? There is nothing beyond death, just eternity. I have never heard the dead speak of pain in the nexus. I have never heard that this hub is one of torture and sorrow. In the face of forever, pain has no meaning. But what if I'm wrong? What if my sleeping children are trying to lure me astray? Fear has placed its icy fingers around my neck. Paranoia will soon follow. Perhaps I can worry myself into an early grave? I doubt it. I am healthy despite my best efforts to not be. I fear that I will have another fifty years in this field of corpses.

As my mind races, I hear the dead shuffling in their graves. I hear them mumbling of grand celebrations and wonderous gatherings. I find myself becoming ill. I don't think I can suffer any longer. I don't think I can continue. But as my mind breaks asunder, I hear birds begin to sing, and the hushed tones of the dead cease. Night has given way to day, and I am offered another chance at peace. I return home, another day's work done. I crawl into bed and set an alarm. The dead dream peacefully in Lookout, and I quietly join them.


End file.
